Another aunt, Anna by name, suggested that as I was at Fullfield, I might take the opportunity of paying her a visit at Manwell, why because I was at Fullfield I don't know, as they are miles apart, counties apart I should say. However, I went because it is difficult to refuse Aunt Anna anything; she accepts no excuses. It is as well for any one who wishes to see Aunt Anna at her best to see her in her own home. She, according to Aunt Cecilia, does best in her own soil. Moreover, she is nothing without her family, it so thoroughly justifies her existence.

Aunt Anna is one of those jewels who owe a certain amount to their setting.

Her husband calls her a jewel, and as such she is known by the family in general which recalls to my mind an interesting biennial custom which was said to hold good in the Manwell family. Every time a lesser jewel made its appearance, the mother-jewel was presented with a diamond and ruby ornament of varying magnificence, with the words "The price of a good woman is far above rubies" conveniently inscribed thereon.

Aunt Anna took it all very seriously, from the tiara downward, and if diamond and ruby shoe-buckles had not involved twins, I think she would have hankered after those, but even as it was, she came in time to possess a very remarkable collection of rubies and diamonds.

Aunt Anna is very prosperous, very happy, very rich, and very contented.

She prides herself on none of these things, but only on the unprejudiced state of her maternal mind.

"Of course," she says, "I cannot help seeing that my children are more beautiful than other people's. It would be ludicrously affected and hypocritical of me if I pretended otherwise. If they were plain, I should be the first to see it, and—"

I think she was going to add "say it," but she stopped short; she invariably does at a deliberate lie, because she is a very truthful woman, and thinks a lie is a wicked thing unless socially a necessity.

I arrived at tea-time which is a thing Aunt Anna expects of her guests. I noticed that she looked a little less contented than usual, and that she even gave way to a gesture of impatience when Mrs. Blankley asked for a fifth cup of tea. Mrs. Blankley is a great advocate of temperance. In connection with which, Aunt Anna once said that she thought there should be temperance in all things beginning with "t." Which vague saying, as illustrative of her wit, was treasured up by her indulgent husband and quoted "As Anna so funnily said."

Now as Aunt Anna, we know, never says witty things unless under strong provocation, she rarely says them, for she is of an amazingly even temperament. She often says she considers cleverness a very dangerous gift. It is not one I seek for either myself or my children. It is so easy to say clever, unkind things. Every one can do it if they choose; the difficulty is not to say them.

It is evident that Aunt Anna chooses the harder part.

Mrs. Blankley, having disposed of the fifth cup of tea, expressed a desire to see the pigs. Aunt Anna never goes to see pigs, nor demands that sacrifice of Londoners, for which act of consideration I honor her; not but what I am fond of pigs, black ones and small. Aunt Anna knows that there are such things because of the continual presence of bacon in her midst. She also knows that pigs are things that get prizes. She still clings to her childish belief that streaky bacon comes from feeding the pigs one day and not the next.

Every one, like Mrs. Blankley, had a thirst to see something, and I was left alone with Aunt Anna, to discuss Pauline's wedding. As a rule, there is nothing Aunt Anna would sooner discuss, but I saw that something was worrying her, and I guessed that the unburdening of a rarely perturbed mind was imminent. It was.

"Is anything wrong?—" I asked. "Any of the children worrying you?" She nodded and pointed to a diamond and ruby brooch and said plaintively. "This one, Claud, just a little worrying."

I tried to hide a smile. "Oh, that's Claud, is it? I get a little mixed."

"I dare say, dear," she said; "but it's quite simple, really. Jack was the tiara, and so on."

"What has Claud been doing?" I asked. "Oh, nothing he can help, I feel sure. He has a temperament, I believe. What it is I don't quite know; people grow out of it, I am told. It's not so much doing things as saying them; and his friends are odd, decidedly odd. They wear curious ties, have disheveled hair, and are distinctly dÉcolletÉ. I don't know if I should apply the word to men, but they are."

I suggested that these little indiscretions on the part of extreme youth need not worry her. But she said they did, in a way, because her other children were so very plain sailing. They never took any one by surprise. She then told me of poor Lady Adelaide, a near neighbor, at least as near as it was possible for any neighbor to be, considering the extent of the Manwell property, one of whose boys had written a book without her knowledge, and the other had married under exactly similar conditions.

I said I thought the writing of a book a minor offense compared to the matrimonial venture. She agreed, but said they were both upsetting because unexpected. As an instance, did I remember when Lady Victoria was butted by her pet lamb, when she was showing the Prince her white farm? It wasn't the upsetting she minded, so much as the unexpectedness of it, because the lamb had a blue ribbon round its neck!

"A black sheep in a white farm, Aunt Anna!" I said.

"No, dear, it was white, and it was a lamb."

But to return to Lady Adelaide. Now that Aunt Anna came to think of it, the marriage was the better of the two shocks, because financially it was a success, and the book wasn't. "Books aren't," She added.

"Is that all Claud does, or, rather, his friends do?" I asked.

"No, it's not," she said. "Ever since he went to Oxford he has changed completely. He has got into his head that we are a self-centered family, and that I am a prejudiced mother, when it is the only thing I am not. I may be everything else for all I know, I may be daily breaking all the commandments without knowing it! But a prejudiced mother I am not! Before he went to Oxford he came into my bedroom one morning, and he said that he thought Maud and Edith were quite the most beautiful girls he had ever seen, and he had sat behind some famous beauty in a theatre a few nights before. I didn't ask him! I was suffering from neuralgia at the time, I remember, and he might, under the circumstances, have agreed just to soothe me, but he said it of his own accord, and he wondered if they would go up to London and walk down Bond Street with him. I said it should be arranged. They walked with him three times up and down Bond Street; he only asked for once. I am only telling you this because you will then realize what this change in him means to me. He came back from Oxford after one term and he said nothing about the girls' beauty, although I thought them improved. I didn't say so; I made some little joke about Bond Street, which he pretended not to understand. So I just said I thought the girls improved, or rather were looking very pretty, and he said, 'My dear mother, we must learn to look at these things from the point of view of the outsider. Place yourself in the position of a man of the world seeing them for the first time.'"

To begin with, Aunt Anna proceeded to explain, she could never place herself in a position to which she was not born; she did not think it right. She said that Claud then urged her to look at it from stranger's point of view, since that of man of the world was impracticable, which Aunt Anna said was a thing no mother could do, nor would she wish to do it. She left such things to actresses. Talking of actresses reminded her that Claud had even found fault with Maud as an actress, when every one knew how very excellent she was. Several newspapers, the Southshire Herald in particular, had alluded to her as one of our most talented actresses.

"We had a professional down to coach her, and he said there was really nothing he could teach her. He was a very nice man, and had all his meals with us. I went," continued Aunt Anna, "to see the great French actress who was in London in the spring, you remember? And if ever a mother went with an unprejudiced mind, I was that mother. I was prepared to think she was better than Maud, and if she had been, I should have been the first to say it. But she was not, at least not to my mind! Maud is always a lady, even on the stage, and that woman was not."

I ventured to suggest that she was perhaps not supposed to be a lady in the part. Aunt Anna said, "Perhaps not, but that does not matter; Maud would be a lady under any circumstances, whatever character she impersonated, laundress or lady. Claud says she will never act till she learns to forget herself I trust one of my daughters will never do that!"

I strove to pacify Aunt Anna, but her tender heart was wounded and she was hard to comfort.

"Claud must admire Edith's violin playing," I ventured.

Aunt Anna shook her head. "He begged me to eliminate from my mind all preconceived notions and to judge her from the unprejudiced point of view. I told Edith to put away her violin. Claud says I must call it a fiddle. I could not bear to see it. I never thought there could be such dissension in our united family."

By way of distraction, I asked if the young man at tea with the disheveled hair and startlingly unorthodox tie was a friend of Claud's, and she said, "His greatest!"

At that moment Claud came into the room, wearing a less earnest expression than usual and Aunt Anna held out a hand of forgiveness. He warmly clasped it. "Mother," he said, "Windlehurst has just told me, in strict confidence, that he considers Maud's the most beautiful face he has ever seen, except, of course, in the best period of ancient Greek art. I knew you wanted to hear the unprejudiced opinion of an unbiased outsider."

I wondered how Windlehurst would like the description! Claud went on: "I think Edith every bit as good looking, more so in some ways. Now that I have heard an unprejudiced opinion I can express mine, which you have known all along. You see, mother, people say we are a self-centered and egotistical family. I have proved that we are not."

"Dear, dearest Claud, your tie is disarranged," murmured his mother, struggling to reduce it to the dimensions of the orthodox sailor knot. "Do wait and listen to all dear Betty is telling me of dearest Pauline's wedding. So interesting. Go on, dear Betty; where had we got to?"